About the Cycling

Our camping place...Look how big these thorns are!

After 1,000 kilometers of cycling, we have had 15 flat tires. The heat combined with the amazing amount of thorns in these regions, has had a disasterous effect on our inner tubes. More than once I was lured off the pavement by delicious blackberries, growing thick over the rocks and fallen fences along Skoeder lake in Montenegro. And more than once I was pulling thorns from my wheel, while Michal was once again applying another patch to the inner tube, both of us cranky.

In Serbia the hardest thing was the heat. We woke up early, sometimes as early as 4am, and then cycled until 10 or 11. The heat hit hard around noon, with the cicadas screaming from their shady trees, and it hung around until 6 or 7pm. So we would laze about during the hot part of the day. We visited Monastaries and public swimming pools, ate giant watermelons in the park and sat in air conditioned, smokey cafes. Then in the evening, as the sun set, we'd put in some more kilometers, often cycling into the dark, finding a spot to put up the tent and then fall asleep.

Well, fall asleep is rather a bad way to put it. Camping alongside corn fields, on old broken roads, and by the side of the Danube (worst night of our life. A story in itself. Barges, fishermen, and one very hopeful and protective doggy, who wanted us to adopt him), it's more like dozing and waking, dozing and waking....Since we've reached the sea coast we have had to pay for more and more camping, as there are more people and less corn fields. At least there aren't anymore late night tractors, blaring up the road.

The heat wave broke while we were camping on the Boca Kotorska bay in Montenegro. Clouds rolled in, and sat heavily, looking like rain but never following through. Suddenly, it wasn't 40 degrees celsius anymore! There was a breeze! It became a perfect cycling climate. We proceeded to cycle up a lot of mountains after that, so it was a wonderful thing, this new weather pattern.

Finally, sometimes it's a question of low moral. For example, we started one day in the town of Murici, which is rock bottom sea level, on the side of Skoeder lake. And low and behold, as we climbed, we realized we were biking up a mountain. (Not a greatly detailed map, we mused). We rose 916 meters in 20 kilometers. I was really lagging, kicking and screaming, like a child. It's not til we got to the top did I sort of calm down, and think, cool. I'm glad we did that. (I also saw a viper on the side of the road that was trying to digest a big lizard, but the lizard was only halfway in its mouth. It was hard to know who was more dead at that moment, the lizard, the snake, or me).